The Mystique of Mount Tai, and The Wrath of my Intestines.

This week, as the United States sits mired in a financial crisis, China goes travelling! Despite the murky economic situation abroad, and its possible influence over the markets here in China, the Chinese were still feeling optimistic enough about their own financial situations to hit the road in record numbers. Newspaper headlines tout that not only have train and plane ticket sales hit record highs, but also a number of different national parks and monuments are breaking records for number of visiting guests. Everyone is feeling good after the Olympics, and the economy is good enough here to not worry about what is going on abroad at this point.

And why wouldn't the people of China want to go travelling over the break. I mean just look at how fun travelling in China is...

Human sized hamsterballs over water?!?! Seriously?! I still don't know if this is real or not, but if it is, why on earth doesn't EVERY lake have these?


Originally I had planned on joining in this travelling orgy, as I wanted to visit one of the most well known tourist destinations in all of China, Mount Tai. Mount Tai is the most famous of the five sacred Taoist mountains of China, and it is a mere 2 hours away from where I have been living for over three years. It is embarrassing for me that I still have yet to climb this mountain, for not only is it said to be one of the more beautiful and important attractions of Shandong and all of China, but I have also come to learn from many students and friends that one does not become a true man until one has summited this holy peak. Now I have also heard this about the Great Wall, which I have climbed several times, and I have even heard this challenge called upon me when friends (or enemies)are trying to convince me to continue to drink Baijiu, but being a man I am forever bound to the fate of accepting a continuous string of moderately difficult, arbitrary challenges in order to prove to the world that I am, in fact, a man. This is what is done, rather than the more direct and socially unacceptable approach of just taking off your pants and showing everyone your dick. (I've tried it, people don't like this one)


Its not that I haven't made an effort to visit Mount Tai, I really want to go. Last year I tried to visit the mountain with my sister, but ran out of time before she left the country. In the spring time I was planning on going with a friend, only to have my school suddenly call me in for a "favor"(lecture or dinner). five years ago I had thought to go many times but always able to put off the trip thinking, "I have plenty of time to do that some other day." Well at this point it has been too long, the questions on my manhood too intense, and so I scheduled with some Chinese friends to take off and climb the mountain over this vacation. This time around I came as close as I have ever come to getting there, as I even bought the bus ticket in advance. But crafty Mount Tai (damn you Mount Tai!!)continues to elude me, as I sit now in my apartment while my two friends stand atop the mountain looking down on me and laughing; two women that are now more man than I'll ever be.



This time around I was foiled by an old friend, one who comes to visit me about 4 to 5 times a year, a friend that I believe most westerners that have come to live in China for an extended period of time are pretty familiar with. You might have guessed, but I am speaking about none other than everybodies good friend, intense and painful Diarrhea!!

OK, so Diarrhea isn't everybody's friend. There are those of us who even hate Diarrhea, Pepto-Bismal for one. Indeed, the only reason I call Diarrhea my friend is because we have known each other for so long and been through so much together over the years. My stomach hasn't been the same ever since I was 17 and carelessly decided to drink the water in Peru. Over the following eleven years Diarrhea has been by my side through good times and bad for a number of moments that have been at the same time both hilarious and agonizingly embarrassing. The reason that I see the need to mention Diarrhea in this blog is because I am not the only foreigner who has come to China full of enthusiasm and curiosity, and ended up in a cold sweat over a toilet.


Almost all Chinese food is cooked in pretty heavy amounts of oil, mostly peanut or soybean oil. Not only is this not the most healthy way of eating, but when you combine this oil saturated diet with the amount of tea that is drinken, it becomes a festering ground for yellow teeth and vicious diarrhea (really brought you in with that one huh? sold on living in China yet?). Many foreigners that come to China for the first time are surprised to find that in many supermarkets and restaurants drinks are often served warm. Even beer is served warm, crappy light beer served at room temperature, nothing finer. Upon being served one of these luke warm beverages most people just shrug their shoulders, snicker a bit and say "ah, China!" But there is good reason the Chinese tend to stay away from refrigerated drinks. One simple reason is until recently there hasn't been proper heating facilities in China, so logically during the colder months from October to May you would avoid cold beverages in order to stave off freezing yourself. But a second important reason is that, apparently, if you have a diet that is heavy with peanut oil you should not drink cold beverages, otherwise, as I have been told, "its very easy to get the diarrhea." Now its clear they haven't quite understood beer to be serving it warm, but at least there is a method to the madness. Not only do foreigners who come to China have to adjust to the sudden intake of large amounts of oil, but they also often continue to drink cold beverages, turning their stomachs to silly putty.

Cold beverages aren't the only road to diarrhea, though. No, there are plenty of other options. In the provincial areas of China outside of the main cities most restaurants still don't have any enforced health codes to follow. At least twice a year I can count on getting some kind of food poisoning from either meat not properly stored/cooked, or vegetables not properly cleaned. For example this time around, the diarrhea was so ferocious that it was almost surely caused by something terrible that I ate in the past few days. This type of diarrhea is not just your run of the mill, intestinal discomfort diarrhea. This is a dysenteric diarrhea marathon the likes of which used to keep Zach and AC Slater in poor health on the trail to Oregon, leaving me the only person to go out and shoot 2000 lbs. worth of Buffalo (despite the fact I know I can only carry 200lbs. ) to take back to Kelly and Jessie, who was just bitten by a snake, at the wagon. (Am I the only person who would name their wagon mates after characters from "Saved by the Bell?") Food poisoning is a more dangerous way of getting sick, and still relatively common to find, especially in the countryside.

This time around my ailment was pretty severe, and hit me without much warning. That's the hard part about Diarrhea, you never know when he is gonna show up, maybe it will be at midnight, maybe he'll stop by while your at a bus station, or even worse ON a bus (I have had terrible experiences on buses, I'll leave it at that.). This time around I was over at a friends house, which was actually nice to not be alone while combating illness, the only problem being this was the bathroom that I was to use...
This sight is a shocking one to a lot of people when they first get to China, and is especially tough on women, as most bathrooms in China are squat toilets, though fortunately foreigners apartments and most hotels come equipped with western toilets. I can actually understand the logic of a squat toilet, I can see how if you were accustomed and able to use it it might feel cleaner than sitting directly on a seat that hundreds or thousands of people beofre you have sat on. The problem is that I'm 6 ft. tall, remarkably unflexible and had to visit this little squat box every 10 minutes for about 3 straight hours. I literally can't do the squatting, and so I am forced to use my arms to prop myself up, either pushing on the wall behind me or holding onto the doorknob. I will say that after a while the arms become quite tired and it is not the most stable situation to go to the bathroom in, and I'll leave it at that. On the positive side though, using this kind of a toilet after becoming fatigued from hours of diarrhea gives you a great opportunity to urinate on your left foot... maybe your right. Everyone has different mechanics in squat shitting, I can't predict how it will turn out, but you do have that going for you, which is nice.

So that leaves me here now, I have managed to return to my home, where I sit at a computer, wearing sweatpants, and nursing an angry stomach that has eaten nothing but plain noodles and peanut butter for the past 2 days. This week alone at least 200,000 men, women, and children will climb to the summit of Mount Tai and prove their manliness, while my intestines has once again proven that I deserve nothing more than to remain here in Zaozhuang in this androgenous state of huge wuss-baggery.